Importance of Academic Goals and Techniques for Comprehension and Retention

This report explores the importance of setting academic goals for success and provides techniques for comprehension and retention. It discusses the significance of short-term and long-term goals in a student's academic career. Additionally, it highlights various strategies such as questioning, storytelling, visualizing, and reading out loud for better comprehension and retention. The report concludes by emphasizing the role of academic goals in providing direction and guidance to students.

PURSUING A VISION
THROUGH ACADEMIC
GOALS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Importance of academic goals.....................................................................................................3
Techniques for comprehension and retention.............................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Academic goals are primarily the goals as well as objectives which are being set by
students in their academic life in order to accomplish success in career and to achieve their
vision. The main aim of this report is to study the importance of setting goals by students for
achieving success.
This report gives a brief about importance of academic goals and techniques for
comprehension as well as retention.
MAIN BODY
Importance of academic goals
Academic goals are basically the various objectives as well and goals which are being set
by the students for their educational success as well as to obtain the accomplishments throughout
the academic careers. Academic goals plays an important role within life of each and every
student no matter in which grade, subject they are studying. Academic goals basically have wide
range of importance and this is highly essential to excel in career (Kickbusch and Hanefeld,
2017). The major importance of setting the academic goals is that they mainly provide the right
direction and guidance to the students. By setting the goals and objectives, students are able to
get the right track on which they have to move and thus helps in moving forward. There are
basically two types of goals which are being set by students throughout their career namely
short-term goals and long-term goals. Although goal-setting generally is of wide nature but these
two types of goals are the main aspect in life.
Short-term goals
Short-term goals are basically the objectives as well as goals which are set and designed
for achieving in near future. In shorty, these are the goals which students have to accomplish and
attain within short time period (Lalande and et.al.,2019). For example- student might set the
goal for achieving good marks in the upcoming semester or class test in time of one week.
Another example is that student might have the goal to travel to another destination for learning
something new next month. Short-term goals basically helps the students to stay on the track and
remain motivated by creating the momentum for growth. Besides this, short-term goals mainly
gives a big picture to the students for future (Berger and Archer, 2018).
Long term goals

These academic goals are the one which are being designed by students for achieving in
the future and in several years. In short, long-term goals are the one which students commit to
accomplish in the long run like in two or three years. Some example of the long-term academic
goals are
 Students might set the goal of pursuing the higher education from abroad after
completing the high school students in the next 2 years.
 Students also might have the vision of opening a new business after completing the post
graduation in 3 or 4 years.
 Buying a spacious and expensive house by earning a great amount and returning back to
the parents in the next 7 years.
Long term goals basically provides a right direction to the students for achieving their
vision and thus provide a deep understanding of the various roadblocks which might hinder their
performance as well as growth. The long term goals are mainly performance based and thus
helps to improve the productivity of students (Duchesne and Larose, 2018).
Techniques for comprehension and retention
The students in the university often learn about various aspects and gain new information
but how much they retain the learned information basically depends on the method which they
use for remembering the new information. This is certainly linked with comprehension and
retention. Comprehension is predominately the ability for processing the text as well as
understanding its meaning. Retention on the other hand, is the extent to which an individual is
able to store the information gained in the long-term memory and thus sustain it for long time.
Questioning
Questioning is one of the most effective strategy of comprehension which helps the
students to emphasize upon meaning of the text. Through questioning, students are able to get
the thorough meaning of text amend its becomes easy for them to comprehend its meaning. For
example- when students ask the questions related to certain topic then they able to derive the
meaning of that topic in an imperative manner (Hung and Chen, 2018).
Story telling
This is considered as the most effective as well as remarkable technique which is being
used in retention. When students link the subject matter with their personal life or develop some
emotional connection with it then it becomes easier for them to retain it or long period of time.

For example- law students in order to remember any case can relate it to the story as if what they
will do if similar situation will happen to them. This will eventually help them to remember it for
life and will be easier to understand (Park, Nam and Lee, 2016).
Visualizing
Visualizing is the most important as well as significant technique in comprehension and
thus helps the students to derive the meaning of text. Visualization is basically creating the clear
and well-through picture within the mind of various things which are being discusses within
passage. When students will create the picture in their heads of a certain topic or text of which
they hear as well as see then this will help them to effectively understand the meaning of various
aspects related to topic (Hung and Chen, 2018).
Reading out loud
This is the another most effective technique of retention which will help students to retain
the information for long period of time. For example- when students will read a topic or text loud
and at high pitch then it will definitely help to increase their memory. This will eventually help
them to enhance their understanding as well as recall (Park, Nam and Lee, 2016).
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized that academic goals plays an important role fir students by
providing right direction and guidance. Students generally set long-term and short-term academic
goals in order to achieve their vision and accomplish objectives. Students mainly uses various
techniques for retention of learned information like storytelling etc.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Berger, N. and Archer, J., 2018. Qualitative insights into the relationship between
socioeconomic status and students’ academic achievement goals. Social Psychology of
Education.21(4). pp.787-803.
Duchesne, S. and Larose, S., 2018. Academic competence and achievement goals: Self-pressure
and disruptive behaviors as mediators. Learning and Individual Differences.68. pp.41-50.
Hung, I.C. and Chen, N.S., 2018. Embodied interactive video lectures for improving learning
comprehension and retention. Computers & Education.117. pp.116-131.
Kickbusch, I. and Hanefeld, J., 2017. Role for academic institutions and think tanks in speeding
progress on sustainable development goals. Bmj.358.p.j3519.
Lalande, D and et.al.,2019. Three Pathways from Achievement Goals to Academic Performance
in an Undergraduate Statistics Course. Statistics Education Research Journal.18(1).
Park, H., Nam, K. and Lee, Y.S., 2016. The role of reading span in factual and inferential
comprehension and retention in L2 reading. Linguistic Research.33. pp.81-106.